Channel 4 FactCheck goes behind the spin to dig out the truth and separate political fact from fiction.

FactCheck’s Twitter followers asked us for a round-up of the biggest claims made by the Yes to AV and No to AV camps.

With the referendum on May 5th, many said there are still too many smoke-and-mirror tactics to make an informed decision.

Here we check the claims you said were the most repeated, and most misunderstood.

YES TO AV CLAIMS:

1. Safe seats led to the expenses scandal

“There is even evidence of a link between how safe seats are and the expenses scandal revelations.”- Nick Clegg, The Daily Telegraph, April 21, 2011

The Political Studies Association found very little evidence that MPs were more likely to be implicated in the 2009 scandal over expenses if they occupied safer seats.

Meanwhile, the right-of-centre think tank Policy Exchange carried out a study looking at whether there was a link between MPs ordered to repay their expenses and the size of their majorities.

It found that length of service that was the key factor, not the size (and therefore safety) of the seat.

MPs elected in safe seats in 2001 or 2005 were no more likely than MPs elected in marginal seats in the same elections to claim dubious expenses.

What’s more, introducing AV wouldn’t call an end to safe seats. Seats with clear majorities under FPTP would likely remain that way under AV.

Some “fairly safe” seats could become less so under AV. However, AV would also make some seats safer – Lib Dems for example, would benefit from second preferences.

2. AV won’t help the Lib Dems

Nick Clegg has “flatly” disagreed that AV is favoured by the Lib Dems because they would be the party most likely to benefit from the system. “It’s impossible to tell how millions of people across the country will vote when they’re given more choice.” – Nick Clegg, The Guardian, April 20, 2011

It seems futile to argue that a vote for the Yes camp wouldn’t vindicate Nick Clegg or the Lib Dems – it would be a victory for him and the Lib Dems because it was a condition of the coalition.

But as Ed Miliband has said: “We can’t reduce the second UK wide referendum in our political history to a verdict on one man.”

FactCheck agrees, so to the wider issue. Well, we can’t know for absolute certain how people will vote but academic modelling shows us that AV “always boosts the Liberal Democrats”, the PSA says.

As a centrist party, the Lib Dems would pick up many second preferences. On that basis, the Lib Dems’ share of seats would be boosted somewhat, at the expense of the other main parties.

Ipsos-Mori concurs, adding that the “one thing that is pretty certain is that AV won’t always help Labour, or always help the Tories, under all circumstances. But it will probably always help the Lib Dems”.

3. MPs would need 50 per cent support

“Your next MP would have to aim to get more than 50 per cent of the vote to be sure of winning” - Yes to Fairer Votes

If a candidate gets more than 50 per cent in the first count, they are elected.

If no candidate gets more than 50 per cent, the least popular candidate is knocked out of the race. Voters who backed the eliminated candidate have their second choice put forward instead, alongside the first choice of voters’ whose candidates are still in the race. This process carries on until someone gets 50 per cent.

Mr Clegg is right that candidates will have to aim for 50 per cent of votes, though it is true that some candidates will end up being elected on fewer than 50 per cent of all the votes cast.

The PSA explains that because voters do not have to rank all the candidates, some votes are likely to be “exhausted” (meaning that all the preferred candidates have been eliminated), before the end of the counting process.

4. AV was used to elect David Cameron as leader of the Tories

“It was used the Conservative Party leadership election. If it is good enough for the Conservative Party why don’t they think it is good enough for the rest of us?”- Nick Clegg, BBC Breakfast, April 20, 2011

Northern Ireland currently uses AV for local government by-elections. In the United States, AV is called “instant run off” and it is used in some local elections.

In the UK, the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties use it for their leadership elections, and it is also used to elect the chairs of House of Commons select committees.

However, it is a close cousin of AV, the “multi-round system” that is used in the Conservative Party leadership elections.

As for national parliamentary elections, the only countries to use AV are Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

NO TO AV CLAIMS:

1. AV will cost £250m

“The change to AV will cost up to an additional £250 million”- No to AV

There is no evidence that AV would require an electronic system. And as the Political Studies Association (PSA) points out, elections held under AV – and under the more demanding STV system – in Australia, Ireland and Scotland are all, in general, conducted using traditional paper ballots.

The AV referendum itself is estimated to cost £91m, regardless of the result. Subtract this £91m cost and the £130m from the No’s estimated £250m and you are left with a cost of £29m for voter education.

Aside from educating the voter, counting the votes would take longer than under FPTP. However, there are no estimates on how much this would cost.

The Cabinet Office has set aside £120m for the next general election; £10m more than the 2010 election (which cost £82m to run and £30m to deliver candidates’ election leaflets).

The PSA said: “Even if we suppose (unrealistically that the current cost of running an election (up to £90m) would be doubled by the introduction of AV, that implies an annual cost across a five-year electoral cycle of only around 30p per person. Clearly, this is a very small sum.”

AV would not lead to permanent hung parliaments and coalition governments.

The best academic research we have suggests that AV wouldn’t make big landslides a thing of the past, and nor would it make hung Parliaments more likely. However, changes in how people are voting mean coalitions are already becoming more likely under FPTP.

The British Election Study results shows that under AV – as with FPTP – only in 2010 would we definitely have seen a coalition in power.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) concludes that hung Parliaments are indeed more likely in the future. But that will be the case under both AV and FPTP, and it reflects the long-term growing power of the Liberal Democrats more than any inherent feature of either voting system. For further analysis see previous FactCheck: Get used to more coalitions – just don’t blame it on AV.

3. AV will help the British National Party (BNP)

“It could have serious repercussions in constituencies where the BNP vote is bigger than normal.“Baroness Warsi, The Sun, March 30, 2011

AV could boost the number of votes for the BNP but it would be highly unlikely to help the party win any seats.

In fact, in a very divided constituency, the BNP arguably has a better chance of winning a seat under First Past the Post than under AV.

Take Australia’s far-right One Nation party – in 1998 Pauline Hanson would have won a seat under FPTP but under AV she didn’t pick up enough low preferences from mainstream voters.

The secondary votes of BNP supporters also wouldn’t swing a seat for any other party on their own – going on last year’s results.

The only way the BNP would do better would be through a move to PR (proportional representation) – which would give them seats in proportion to the share of the vote they achieve – and that’s not on offer.

“FPTP sticks to the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ – unlike AV, where supporters of fringe parties can end up having their vote counted several times, while mainstream voters only get one say,”- No to AV.

AV does not give people extra votes. The system sticks to the principle of “one person, one vote”.

In the first round, everyone’s first preference is counted as one vote. To win the first round, a candidate has to achieve more than 50 per cent of all the votes.

If no one gets 50 per cent of the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. In the second round, if your favourite is still in the race your first preference still counts for one vote – but if your candidate was eliminated, your first preference now counts for zero and your second preference counts for one vote.

Every voter would be treated equally with each vote only counting once in deciding who is elected in each constituency.

Comments

Saltaire Sam
26-Apr-11at

Excellent analysis. A point about the 50%: while it won’t be necessary to get 50% of first choices, the fact that a would-be MP needs to be picking up second and third preferences, should make sure that they at least put a bit more effort into campaigning and listening to those people who are not their natural supporters.

Too often at present they concentrate on ‘getting out their core vote’ and ignore the rest of the constituents. Under AV they would do that at their peril.

There is a contradiction here. If AV helps the Liberal Democrats win more seats (YES #2) then given the prevailing political situtaion, chances of a hung parliament MUST increase (oppsoite of NO #2). Of course, it is logically possible that the LD seat gains come entirely at Labour’s expense or the Conservatives (in any one election), but on occasions they will take from both, increasing the chances of a hung parliament. Over time, then, we would expect to see more hung parliaments under AV e.g. 1992. Indeed, Dr Alan Renwick says that AV is likely to modestly increase the number of hung parliaments.

Of course, whether you value or loathe hung parliaments depends on your values but AV will make them a bit more likely in the UK (BTW, Australia has a different political structure – a much weaker 3rd party).

SO FACTCHECK IS MISLEADING HERE. The meter should really be just to the left of the centre line not on the fiction line.

It’s not misleading, the point that is made in NO#2 is that current voting trends suggest hung parliaments are more likely regardless of the voting system used. So whilst AV may lead to more hung parliaments, so would FPTP. The way you worded your comment implied that FPTP would prevent further hung parliaments.

The fact that most of these are key claims by both campaigns, and most are ‘fiction,’ shows how much of a farce this whole campaign has been.

General elections usually get a bit daft, but this has been plain childish. It’s certainly encouraged the popular view of politics as a waste of time, controlled by patronising elitists who don’t care about anything beyond the fight.

Yes, another unsubstantiated claim. Even if it is true there’s no indication they want to replace it with an antiquated system that only works if there are only 2 candidates as is the case with FPTP. I would guess they are after PR?
How about that one Cathy?

There is some truth in the No argument that AV gives some people more votes than others. For example, my one vote in my constituency will have exactly the same effect as two other people’s votes combined so to claim I only have one vote is somewhat disingenuous.

You will see that there were 35 constituencies in which the BNP vote was larger than the first-past-the-post majority. For example, in Amber Valley the Conservative won with a majority of 536 but the BNP vote was 3,195. In Ashfield the Lib Dem won with a majority of 192 but the BNP vote was 2,781. And so it continues for 33 more seats.

Please get your facts right, FactCheck – otherwise there is no point in your existence!

P.S. I *think* you are trying to claim that there aren’t many seats in which BNP votes alone would take another candidate over 50%. But of course it simply isn’t true that another candidate needs to be above 50% to win under AV. That would only be so if every voter expressed a full set of preferences across all candidates – which is highly unlikely. That isn’t the relevant question, in any event. The relevant question is whether a candidate would need to appeal to the second preferences of BNP voters to win (which is what Warsi claimed). And in a number of constituencies that’s just a fact, not a falsehood.

No-one seems to have picked up on the fact that counting multiple preferences will take longer thus adding to the costs (labour time of those officials doing the counting)even if elecronic voting systems are not used – and that this extra counting time will also mean an end to the announcement of election results during the night following an election

But the people on the count usually aren’t paid by the hour, just a fixed sum, so unless your council takes on a load more staff to win the race to get the count in first, it shouldn’t be any more expensive.

Phil Woollas was found guilty of making a false statement and lost his seat. This is only the second national referendum, and I would argue of much greater lasting importance than one result in Oldham and Saddleworth. When will Baroness Warsi (whose statement about AV favouring the BNP was manipulative and offensive) and the rest be charged?

The only significant extra costs for a general election using AV would be those associated with the actual counting of the votes.

And the actual count for the 2010 general election held under FPTP cost only £6 million, less than 5 percent of the total costs.

Therefore even if the cost of the count were to double with the change to AV that would only increase the cost of each general election by that £6 million, far short of the £200 million being suggested by the Tory party.

In fact practical experience from Ireland, where AV is used for parliamentary by-elections, indicates that manual AV counts are not difficult or expensive, and that therefore the change would add only a few million to the cost of a UK general election.

There is a breakdown of the estimated costs for the AV referendum in this letter:

and it can be seen that at £5.9 million the cost of the actual count is dwarfed by other costs, such as those connected with the polling stations (£49 million), postal votes (£18 million) and poll cards (£18 million).

@Jim As the Oldham and Saddleworth situation shows, the mainstream parties already court the supporters of parties like the BNP. The BNP themselves are very clear that they are against AV. Do you think that’s an elaborate bluff?

The BNP favour proportional representation, not AV – since of course they gained seats under PR in the European elections. It isn’t a bluff. The BNP would probably be no more likely to win a seat under AV than under FPTP. That’s not the claim. What *is* is the claim is that there are 35 constituencies in which the BNP vote is more than the majority of the winning candidate, so securing second preferences of BNP voters could determine who wins the seat. See here: http://electionresources.org/uk/2010.xls

It’s not a bluff – they would not win seats under AV but this does not mean AV would not increase their legitimacy and influence in some constituencies.

“The secondary votes of BNP supporters also wouldn’t swing a seat for any other party on their own – going on last year’s results.

Perhaps C4 should take a look at Dagenham and Rainham in the 2010 General Election:

LAB 17,813
CON 15,183
BNP 4,952
LD 3,806
UKIP 1,569
OTH 909

As you can see, it is logically possible and plausible that the BNP would be in third after the distribution of other votes (the LD would have to overtake them and they are unlikely to get many 2nd preferences from UKIP voters). Hence, LAB would have needed to get 4,304 2nd and 3rd preferences from the other parties (out of the 4,716 available) to reach 50%+1 and win the election before the BNP preferences are counted. This is a tall ask. Hence, it is likely the 2nd preferences of BNP voters would determine the seat under AV given anything like this result.

I agree with AV2011-co-uk. But actually, given the choice I’d go for PR (and I’m a member of one of the two main parties). I loathe the opinions of the BNP, but denying the party a voice doesn’t make those views go a way. In fact, feeling unrepresented is likely to exaggerate their supporters’ feelings. If you want to see ‘cleaner’ less extreme politics, make it more transparent. As Louis Brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. I bet that a BNP MP wouldn’t last long, and a few more Greens etc. would be good for us all.

Re the BNP, if a seat has a large presence from that party, surely if you want to win you will have to appeal to BNP supporters for one of their preferences, thus further legitimising them or at least their policies.

And re people having more than 1 vote under AV, surely the more preferences you list the more chance that your vote will be counted more than once. My first preference when counted might mean the difference between candidate A being eliminated rather than candidate B, which means this vote matters just ad much as maybe my fourth preference who actually ends up as the MP.

But while the first round meant sorting and counting all 28,412 ballot papers, the second involved only 203 in the pile of the first candidate to be eliminated, and so on.

Overall the seven extra counting rounds meant that the tellers had to do 16,878 more sorting and counting operations than under FPTP, an increase of 59%.

Maybe tellers would be slower picking out numbers 1, 2 etc than a single X, but against that we wouldn’t always have nine candidates and some results would be decided on the first count.

Also tellers are not active for the entire period between the polls closing and the result being declared, and the transport of ballot boxes, the verification count, the first count proper when ballot papers are actually sorted between candidates, and the delay after completion of the count before the result is declared, would all be essentially the same under AV as under FPTP.

A generous estimate would be that on average the declaration might be delayed by 2 hours under AV compared to FPTP.

It’s a pity that our politicians seem unable to get out of the habit of lying to us & treating us with utter contempt. They clearly believe we’re so stupid that we can’t see through their lies. It’s a pity the Electoral Commmission hasn’t got the power to ban any politician for making any public utterance for a period of time – if they are proved to have lied. For serious cases, they should be required to vacate their seats – including House of Lords seats. We may have gone a little way to clean up our politics, but politicians are still very dirty & appear to lack the basic decency & honour to tell the truth.

Nice work with this analysis. I find it quite disturbing, though, that so much of the British media is letting David Cameron specifically get away with deceiving voters with a kind of “boys will be boys” kind of shrug. Here you have the first national referendum in a generation, a great chance to include voters in a meaningful decision, and it’s being fought with false claims directly from the prime minster. Remarkable.

about 50,000 tellers were employed for the 2010 general election, and so one way or another the cost of the count would increase by the cost of 100,000 teller-hours which would be £1.6 million, say £2 million to be on the safe side.

That’s one hundredth of the £200 million extra on the cost of each general election which has been floated by the Tory…

Is this FactCheck, or OpinionBlog? Nothing wrong with opinions, but this isn’t any kind of objective fact checking.

I disagree that 2 is a fiction. Lib Dems are no more centrist than Labour; and there are many areas where Labour and Tory are closer than the Lib Dems (e.g., drug policy, immigration, the EU).

Claiming that the Lib Dems would benefit overall is your opinion – I can easily argue the other way, and say how Tory/Labour votes will increase from people who prefer either to the Lib Dems. But what’s more, it doesn’t refute Clegg’s claim that we can’t know how millions of people vote.

And 4 is unfair – yes, it’s technically incorrect the way he said it. But referring to the runoff voting used by the Tory party is fair game, and it shares all of the same flaws that David Cameron and No2AV make of FPTP (e.g., that the “loser” of first round votes was elected). To dispute this, you have to show how the difference between instant runoff voting (i.e., AV) and runoff voting is important.

Firstly – only PR is best for our country – unlike FPTP (and AV) every persons vote goes towards the make-up of our government i.e. it is the only democratic method.

AV is a big scam – all media coverage is an *intellectually facile* argument.

Some pretend AV is more democratic when it is not – it just lends itself more to the pretence that it is i.e. many peoples choice is ignored, they are just redistributing votes – *all those voters still do not get the MP or party they desire*.

Government will still be the choice of less than 40%.

It does not mean every MP is the choice of 50% (or whatever story you spin it) – that is complete BS for thickest of electorate.

That was some truth for a change – perhaps C4 will take the opportunity to put this public interest remit serious question to all those ‘YES’/’NO’ game players popping up in our faces:

‘Isn’t it the case that the UK’s Electoral Laws, Electoral Registers and Election Returning Officer powers are not ‘fit for purpose’ to enable proper scrutiny of the votes of the many individuals who are registered on more than one electoral roll across the UK to ensure each elector votes only once in order to deliver a verifiable, genuine and democratic ‘One Person-One Vote’ referendum and a GUARANTEED ‘democratic’, ‘free’ and ‘fair’ referendum result?’

You say that it’s fiction that some people don’t get more votes than others because at each round another of your preferences is considered. However my understanding of the AV system under consideration is that you don’t have to preference all candidates, so if you’d rather not give the BNP any level of preference you don’t put anything next to them. In that case, unlike with the Australian system, you may well get more or less votes than another person?

The implication of saying “the Lib Dems will gain” or “it will favour the Lib Dems” gives the impression that a cabal of MPs stands to benefit. The real beneficiaries are the people who vote Lib Dem and Lib Dem policies in general.

CNTV’s comment ‘That was some truth for a change’ above actually refers to this which somehow failed to appear before it:

The proposed AV v FPTP UK Referendum consists of a contrived, fabricated and simplistic bipolar choice of only two inadequate options set against unfit UK Electoral Law, unfit UK Electoral Registers and unfit UK Election Returning Officer negligible powers of cross-constituency scrutiny. Election Returning Officers will be unable to guarantee ‘One Person-One Vote’ nor to sign off ANY part of such a referendum as ‘true’, ‘democratic’, ‘free’ or ‘fair’.

Irrespective of all the hype re FPTP v AV the one fact that seems to be neglected is that no matter which system is voted for, it will not engage the British voter. In order for our government to become truly democratic we must wholeheartedly embrace that shining exemplar, promoted by so many, of the Australian voting system. That INCLUDES making the requirement to vote compulsory. Only by making voting a legal obligation will the electorate take part in the democratic system to which this country aspires.
This issue should have been addressed BEFORE the referendum on 05 May. It’s all a bit, back to front.

I’m firmly of the belief that participation in elections is a duty and not just a privilege. It did make me chuckle though, to think about exactly how a referendum on compulsory voting would go down… to give it any kind of credibility, would you have to ‘count’ all the abstentions?

So how come that we now have Cameron and other MPs who’ve already agreed that the election of police chiefs should not be by FPTP, but instead by a form of AV, drumming into us that FPTP is the only proper way to hold an election, and that AV is fundamentally undemocratic, means the end of “one person one vote”, and even risks letting in the BNP?

Your explanation of the two voting systems FPTP and AV is excellent, but what would you think about another choice?
The British Referendum on May 5th asks: FPTP ( relative majority voting in a one-person- constituency) plus AV ( alternative voting or preference vote like in Australia) YES or NO?
I say: FPTP in three-persons-constituencies plus American Primaries plus AV plus 33,33% PR for women or men. I have extensively elaborated on my web page http://www.2009-de.com .
My website proposes a slight improvement of the Westminster model which makes it superior to the American gridlock. My new idea is: Reform of the one-person-constituency (“winner takes all”) to a three-persons-constituency with relative majority voting and a list of 2 candidates for every party ( party A = 2 seats of parliament, party B = 1 seat of parliament; parties C, D, E, etc. get nothing or “everything” in another constituency, as is normal in relative majority voting, invented by the ingenious Greeks. )
In a time of transition it is advisable to have a two-persons-ticket of a man and a woman or a woman and a man plus the Australian “preference vote” ( AV ).